Posted by Mary Ann on August 12, 2003 at 17:15:22:
In Reply to: "Reading" Orchestra experience posted by keith C. on August 08, 2003 at 11:54:05:
If you want to be a good sight reader, you have to reach a point where you can...sight read!! That means, you know your fingerings without thinking about them; you know how to play everything in every key, and what it sounds like and looks like.
As someone else said, sightreading can actually be an adrenalin rush; it engages your mind and body at the highest level of attention. But it can take a long time to get good at it. Besides the above, sight reading improves by doing a lot of it. Scrambling over and over until you start to recognize what you have to do to get "there" from "here."
Last night I sight read music that was over my head for two hours. On a different instrument more notes would have come out of the horn, but I was reading bass clef and playing euphonium instead of F tuba. I could hear the pitches but not figure out which valves to put down to get them. I'da done just fine if I had a mouthpiece and a mike instead of having to use valves. By next week....I'll be much better!
MA